Our perspective at VantagePoint

Product Launches: Tools for Reaching your Target Audiences

Launching a new product can be a daunting and complicated task. There are multiple opinions, differing goals and varying expectations across a company’s stakeholders, and you can’t just tie it up with a bow and expect the customers to come pouring in.

Because of this complexity, it is exceedingly important to ensure any product launch efforts are driven by — and rooted in — a solid strategy. The value of this strategy is manifold. It sets the stage and the tone of the launch and helps drive all the tactics. At the same time, a well-crafted strategy can help unite multiple parties and business functions around a common set of goals.

This set of common goals is essential to the success of any launch and helps companies avoid a costly derailment when the launch train is already moving down the tracks at a steady clip.

Where the goals and approaches WILL inherently differ is with the audiences your product launch will target.

When launching a new product, it isn’t enough to merely identify the target market into which you want to launch. The truth is there are myriad audiences that compose those targets, each with different needs, challenges and roles in the purchasing process. It’s important to take the time to map out a tailored approach to ensure these varied audiences are properly and effectively addressed. (Not having value propositions for all parties is one of the 10 reasons product launches can fail.)

This may sound like a complex process, but mapping out how specifically you’ll address or appeal to each audience can really be pretty straightforward.

To get you started, VantagePoint has created a simple matrix to help you think well about each of your target audiences and how the product launch should look different for each one. Click below to download this free tool.